Ashley - Strobe Camera Left

This is an exploration into the mind-numbing voodoo they call flash. As of last night, I have only tried this one time – yes one – so you get to learn from my mistakes and watch as I figure this out (hopefully).  But be forewarned – I utterly suck at this strobist stuff, so these next few posts will be me learning, out loud.  I will post some good stuff, I hope – and most likely a shitload of pictures that look like total ass.  It’s all part of the process.

Research

Step 1 for me was joining the Flickr groups, Nikon CLS and Strobist.com.  I firmly believe in researching what I want to do before I try it out.  OK, not firmly.  Half the time I jump in with both feet before I realize I don’t own a life preserver.  But I should always begin with research.  Anyhow, these two groups have some excellent examples of shots done with various lighting setups that have really good results.  I spent quite a bit of time searching images (that’s read, stealing ideas from their comments and EXIF) and reading threads in both groups.  Knowing nothing about lighting other than sticking up the flash and pointing it at the object you want bright and shiny, this was a logical start for me.

Setting Up

Next, I had to figure out how to get my light and camera to play nice.  When I first pulled the SB-600 off the camera, it gave me the middle finger and told me to piss off.  Harsh.  I knew I wanted to have my flash off-camera and I wanted to control how much light came out of it, but that was about all I knew.  I had to learn to take control.  Reading through the manual (imagine that) I found the steps I needed to get my Nikon SB-600 Speedlight to be a slave to my Nikon D700.  Here’s a rundown for this shot:

On the SB-600

1. On your SB-600 – get into the CLS mode by pressing the zoom and the minus (-) sign.
2. Scroll until you find the CLS icon and then press MODE to change it to ON.
3. Hit the power button and your ready.

On the D700

1. On the D700 – press the MENU button
2. Scroll down to the edit menu
3. Select Bracketing/Flash
4. Select menu e3 (Flash control for built-in flash)
5. Go down to Commander Mode (C with a lightening bolt)
6. I then changed Built-in Flash to “–” meaning it will not fire.
7. I changed Group A to mode M (manual) and the power to 1/128.
8. Then I set my channel to match my flash (3 in this case).

From there, I jammed the Gary Fong LightSphere diffuser on top of my flash and set it on the table next to my daughter (to her dismay), off to her right and slightly below chin-height, about 3 feet away.  Fired a few shots, realizing I was blinding the poor child.  Rather than paying for a seeing eye dog and retinal surgery, I grabbed the SB-600 and I adjusted the zoom on there and set it to 50mm and toned down that power.

The next shoot I took (with her rubbing her blinded eye) is the one I posted.

What I Learned

That’s easy – I learned I suck wind at lighting and have a lot more reading to do.  But I learned the more I played with it, the more I was starting to understand about distance, power, etc.  I’ll be spending a lot more time in the coming months with light.  Learning to bounce it, diffuse it, angle it and basically whip it into submission.

Any pointers you care to share would be greatly appreciated.

St Francis Xavier Church, Nashua NH - Tonemapped

Well, I have had the D700 for over a week now and am really starting to learn all the control and power this thing has.  I’ve found that I need to do next to nothing once it gets off the camera and onto my computer to process.  They are pretty sharp right off the lens.  The example to the right is just a slight tone-mapping to bring out some detail and a quick convert to monotone.

As you can see, the clarity and depth of the D700 is just out of this world.  Even without the tone-mapping, it’s a razor sharp image with no post-work.  I am slowly becoming a Full Frame snob and am seeking out the work of other Full Framers (even started a group – almost a support group – of Full Frame addicts on Flickr!)  I am fining myself only looking at shots from D700′s, D3(x)’s, 5D Mark II’s, 1D Mark III’s and α A900′s!  Yeah, snobby, I know.  But I am learning.

Nikon D700

My quest for the Nikon D700 12.1MP is at an end!!

I know Nikon is stopping production of the 2008 model of the D700 in favor of the D700s or D700x.  Knowing Nikon’s pricing game, it will be a good chuck of change more for the upgraded model.  I don’t want the upgraded toys (video) at all.

Rather than wait to see what Nikon is going to do – which will cause people to scramble for the 700 to save a grand, I want to beat the rush.  I knew I was upgrading by summer, but the chances of finding a D700 by then may be slim.  I am not willing to take that chance!

So, I pulled the trigger and ordered my D700.  Got it with 4, SanDisk Extreme III 4 GB CompactFlash Memory Cards, an extra Nikon EN-EL3e Rechargeable Li-Ion Battery4 and theNikon MB-D10 Multi Power Battery Pack.  I am so freaking pumped right now!

Now, a new wait beings – for the UPS guy to get here with the goods!

Saint Patrick's - Poster

Trying something new now – rather than just posting photos to my pro site for printing and framing, I thought, why not try shooting them to be printed as posters? So, I have a few examples out there now and want to see if it catches on at all. I am not looking to get rich with this latest scheme – just hoping to cover the cost of the SmugMug website that is hosting the images.

Feedback

So far, I have had a lot of positive feed back on this photo on both my Flickr account and my raylarose.com account.  (The only version for sale is on the raylarose.com site – the one on Flickr is for just looking at!)  But if you can leave feedback here or there, I’d really appreciate it.

To check it out, I am thinking of printing this as a 30″ poster and framing it to replace my  Ansel Adams shot of the Snake River and Grand Teton’s over my fireplace.

Yeah, good for the ego!  Also will server as my reminder to why I want the D700 or 700s.  If the phantom thing ever hits the street.

Finding the Target

My first step,though, is getting the word out that this shot can be purchased.  Not only out, but out to the right people.  I need to find my target – those with ties to New York City and the Cathedral there.  Not sure how I want to tackle that yet, but is something I need to figure out.  Anything you can give in way of advise is greatly appreciated.

Getting the Shot

I covered this in a previous post.  This is that same photo, brought into Black and White and some contrast adjusted to bring out the lights and darks just right.  Really, just played with the curves until it was damned sexy.  Then I reset the canvas and added a little text to the bottom.  That was all!

Well, gotta go look at my bank account and cry now… no closer to my 700!

Nikon D700

Well… rumors are abound today.  In my quest for the D700, it appears that the D700′s are no longer being stocked anywhere – people are selling what they have, making room for… well, for what?  Oh, how the mighty Nikon likes to toy with our emotions.

So, it’s really anyone’s guess right now, but according to Nikon Rumors website, Google has indexed a hit for the D700x (and D800 – though that’s a typo in my book) cameras.

Well crap.  What do I save for now?  These guys are killing me.

St Patrick's Cathedral - New York City

Had a wonderful 3-day weekend in New York City with my best friend and fellow photo-nut, Dori.  Lucky for me, she lives just off Central Park on Broadway.  We spent the weekend walk, talking, drinking and shooting.  Not necessarily in that order.

I was really hoping to have my D700 for this trip, but I still do not have the money – so I made the best of it with my D80.

One of our photowalks was to St Patrick’s Cathedral.  It was a hike-and-a-half from her place on Broadway, but so worth it.  Especially after walking through an exceptionally snowy Central Park.

Anyhow, at St Patrick’s, I knew I wanted to do some fisheye and some 10mm shots with my Sigma.  Posted here is an example of my 10mm Sigma shot. It was simply amazing in here.  I took over 100 photos of the walls and ceiling and am slowly going through them to clean em up.

I really expected to do all these in HDR as well, but know what, I am not.  The HDR on these looks way to fake.  The details you see here are a combination of white-balance and contrasting.  I’ll tell you how.

Tonal Contrasting

Tonal contrast is what some call “pseudo-HDR” – but it is really about brining out the details of a single RAW image.  No blending, no multiple exposures.  Just a single image.

To do this, I first off-loaded my RAW file in Lightroom.  There was no need for adjusting the crop – this is where it sat – propped up against Dori’s Canon.  (As one friend on Flickr said, now we know what Canon’s are good for!)  Anyhow, in Lightroom, I set the white-balance to daylight to give the room a golden glow.  Then sent it off to Photoshop for the touches.

Color Efex 3 Settings

In Photoshop, I opened up NIK Software’s Color Efex Pro 3 to contrast the lights and darks. You can see the settings I used just to the right. It was very subtle.  I did not touch the Highlights, nudged the Shadows and gave the most contrast to the Midtones.  But as you can see, just barely.

After that, I did a line & curve adjustment for balance and added a highpass filter to make up for the limited sharpness of my D80.  Again, it was a very minimal pass.

That was it.

The above image is the result of slightly less than one minute of processing from camera to export.  And without any HDR.

I do really like the look and feel of tonemapping over HDR in many instances.  Especially in architecture.  But for things like nature, I prefer the use of HDR to bring out the light as seen by the naked eye.

I have a ton more shots to see on my pro page (Raymond Larose Photography) and will be posting a new image daily on my fun page (Flickr).